Our Programs

Built Environment

CEH’s Built Environment Program works with large-scale purchasers from corporations to school districts, universities, and hospital chains, advising them on how to procure healthy furniture, carpet, and flooring. By providing procurement officers and other executives with one-on-one consulting, customized technical assistance, webinars, and user-friendly product guides, CEH moves organizations from intention to policy to implementation.

Through our Purchaser Pledge, we empower purchasers to buy furniture that does not contain the “Hazardous Handful” which includes toxics like flame retardants and fluorinated substances that can have negative effects on health. The companies that have signed the pledge—including Kaiser Permanente, LinkedIn, and the University of California system—collectively spend more than $500 million annually on furniture.

Learn more about furniture and flooring Procurement.

Food

The Food Program aims to build a world worth aspiring to: where disposable foodware no longer contains toxic ingredients like PFAS or styrene—and as a whole—disposables diminish their prominence in our lives and in our landfills. Over the last four years, CEH has become a leader in providing scientific and procurement advice on healthier, environmentally preferable foodware options.  By creating resources like GreenScreen Certified™ Standard for Food Service Ware and the Ditching Disposables Toolkit for K-12 schools, our work is transforming the $19 billion global food service disposables market.

Learn more about Foodware and foodware procurement

Illegal Toxic Threats

Through public interest litigation, CEH harnesses the power of laws such as California’s Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act (aka Prop 65) to force the elimination of toxic chemicals in consumer products. CEH has won hundreds of legal settlements that protect the health of millions of people across the U.S. and the entire globe.

We also partner with environmental justice organizations to elicit change at the community level. In our work with California residents in Long Beach, Paramount, and El Cajon, we provide technical assistance with air monitoring, partner with residents to build legal cases against facilities, and advocate alongside these community members to continue to defend against unsafe toxic exposures even after a case has settled.

Learn more about toxic chemicals in Products and Air and Water.

Petrochemicals, Plastics, & Climate

Despite growing awareness of the profound climate impacts and health hazards associated with petroleum-derived materials, the petrochemical industry is growing. The ongoing industry buildout continues to disproportionately harm low-income communities and communities of color, who are also exposed to toxic chemicals at higher rates, are those most threatened by climate change, and face a host of other environmental, social, political and economic injustices.

Our new Petrochemicals, Plastics, & Climate program builds on CEH’s decades of experience supporting institutions to procure safer products, advocating for equitable and health-protective laws and policies, working with communities to safeguard their health and rights, and holding corporations and government accountable for actions or inactions that threaten human and planetary health.

Learn more about Petrochemicals, Plastics & Climate.

Policy

Policy is a cornerstone of CEH’s strategy to create widespread and lasting positive change for our collective health. CEH is a key player in environmental and public health policy, securing far-reaching victories at the local, state, and federal levels with our partners. We fight to protect laws that are critical to safeguarding the health of people in every community, such as California’s Proposition 65, other state warning and labeling laws, and the federal Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

Our Policy work stretches all across the country from a landmark bill in California that bans PFAS in paper-based food packaging to North Carolina where we partner with allies and grassroots groups to address the concerns of Cape Fear communities who have been exposed for decades to numerous PFAS in their drinking water, air, food, and soil because of pollution from the Chemours facility in Fayetteville, NC.

Learn more about our work to uphold Prop 65 and protect North Carolina communities from PFAS ‘Forever Chemicals.”